quotations about silence
You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.
U. S. POLICE OFFICERS
Miranda Warning
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word.
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
Silence
There are times when silence is the best way to yell at the top of your voice.
O. A. BATTISTA
attributed, Braude's Second Encyclopedia of Stories, Quotations, and Anecdotes
If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence.
To break the endless song.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"If All the Skies"
My silence will convict me.
REFUSED
"Last Minute Pointer"
Do not too hastily conclude that silence is indifference. Indifference is not to care, not to act, not even to think or breathe. Indifference is inhuman and inhumane. Silence, on the other hand, is almost always premeditated, a willful act. Without silence there would be no sound.
JUSTIN BRYAN SNIDER
posted on daily quotation board at Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong, October 17, 2006
If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Silence has many beauties.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, The Sons of Aleus
Silence when in pain
Silence when my thoughts may cause a slight unease
Silence when in pain
Silence cause the fear it begins with a sound
Silence in the chair where they give me the answers
Silence when I'm asking a difficult question
Silence cause I already know all the facts yeah
Silence cause I don't want to hear it today
FICTION PLANE
"Silence"
Nothing was more conducive to the development of observation than compulsory silence.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
I have found out in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
The Man from Vermont
Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact--from calling on us to look through a heap of millet-seed in order to be sure that there is no pearl in it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
But my words like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.
PAUL SIMON
The Sound of Silence
There are unfortunates who never realize the beauty of silence, the restless ones. Wherever they are they destroy it. They chronically feel an incessant desire to fill up all the crevices of time with sound. They contribute to the vast sum of disease in the world. They are themselves diseased. They lack one of the most precious blessings of health, balance of qualities that give poise, expressing itself in love of peace, in silence.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Silence", Reactions and Other Essays
A silence so sweet
it repels all bees
with an inhuman excess
and ripples a tragic mask
in a goathead's bleached grin,
snow-fired, cow-fat, reflecting nothing
EDWARD BUTSCHER
Poems about Silence
Be silent or say something better than silence.
PYTHAGORAS
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
LAWRENCE DURRELL
Justine
I have followed Silence from the belt of Orion to Berenice's curls -- then lost it in the laughter of my soul.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Silence is the safety zone of conversation.
ARNOLD H. GLASOW
attributed, Reader's Digest, 1975